Concrete Park is a graphic novel from the minds of Erika Alexander (The Cosby Show, Living Single), her brother Robert, and Tony Puryear, a screenwriter who penned Arnold Schwarzenegger's Eraser. The Dark Horse Comics-published series takes place in the near-future when an overcrowded Earth sends its younger, poorer inhabitants to work on a desert planet.

"[Erika's] brother came up with the name 'Concrete Park,' and it's such a great oxymoron like 'military intelligence' or 'jumbo shrimp,' said Puryear. "We all started jamming about what would happen if Earth shipped its youth underclass to another planet to mine for resources. We created an Australia in space that's presumably a blank slate, but there are native beings living there as well."

Concrete Park was originally conceived as a screenplay, but it was continuously passed over by studios. It found life in comic book form after Mike Richardson, the president of Dark Horse Comics, took interest in the series, which the creators pitched to him via email. According to Erika Alexander, many of the previous studio rejections had nothing to do with Concrete Park's content, but its characters' appearances.

"I heard [from studio executives] that there were no black people in space, and that black people didn't see themselves in the future," she said, explaining that the series, despite being set on a planet where nothing grows, is one of hope, much like stories of real-world oppressed people.

"People of color grow up in harsh circumstances, but we made rock-and-roll, we made jazz," she added. "Creatively we prosper. We took the damage and turned it into something beautiful."

Concrete Park is very political in nature, often mirroring real-world people and happenings. In fact, there are Malcolm X and Martin Luther King analogs, but they weren't intentional; the book's social slant is a direct reflection of its socially conscious creators.

Eventually, Alexander and Puryear would like to see Concrete Park become a multimedia juggernaut that has a television, film, and video game presence.

"I would love for this to be a big sandbox video game," said Puryear. "Some people say that the chunkiness of my art reminds people of Grand Theft Auto. I don't always agree with the game's message, but I like its playability."

If you want to explore Concrete Park's world, you can do so by purchasing the comic, which is available in digital format at darkhorse.com.

About the Author

For more than a decade, Jeffrey L. Wilson has penned gadget- and video game-related nerd-copy for a variety of publications, including 1UP, 2D-X, The Cask, Laptop, LifeStyler, Parenting, Sync, Wise Bread, and WWE. He now brings his knowledge and skillset to PCMag as Senior Analyst.
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